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The Federal Communications Commission’s third and most recent broadband quality report has determined that some types of broadband are still better than others, with fiber to the home and satellite generally offering more than the promised upload and download speeds at times of peak usage. But of course, that’s not the only stat users might care about, which is why the FCC measures 13 different variables as part of its data collection efforts.
The data comes from Sam Knows and special routers sitting inside roughly 10,000 homes. Those routers report on upload and download speeds, latency and customers’ service tiers to create a nationwide picture of broadband quality. And in general people should be pretty happy. As the chart above shows, people are mostly getting what they pay for, with customers of AT&T most likely to feel short-changed. What’s most surprising about this data is that satellite has moved from being pretty spotty to achieving high throughputs even at peak times, thanks to new satellites launched in the last two years. Sure, the service maxes out at 12 Mbps, but customers are getting those 12 Mbps and then some.
Some broadband is better than others, like fiber and …. satellite!
Kansas continues to lag behind the rest of the nation in access to high-speed Internet service, according to state and federal reports.
Only about a quarter of Kansans have fixed Internet service running at speeds fast enough to effectively stream audio or video, according to the annual report of the Kansas Corporation Commission, recently presented to the utilities committees in the state Legislature. Nationally, about four out of 10 households have that capability. “Broadband is a foundation for economic growth, job creation, global competitiveness and a better way of life, but broadband in America is not yet where it needs to be,” the report said. “Similarly, advances in broadband deployment and speeds continue in Kansas, but we are not yet where we need to be.” The report calculated that about 63 percent of the state’s 1.2 million households have a fixed connection to an Internet service offering download speeds of at least 200 kilobyte per second. That 200 Kbps is about four times as fast as the old dial-up services and comparable to AT&T’s lowest-tier DSL broadband service. The phone company’s Internet offerings range from a “Basic” package with speeds from 200 to 768 kilobytes per second, up to a U-verse “turbo” package between 18 and 24 megabytes per second, or Mbps. The state report also showed that 292,000 households – or 24 percent – are connected to faster broadband service offering a download speed of 3 megabytes per second or faster.
Kansas still behind in high-speed Internet access
A controversial telephone-deregulation bill that opponents say could leave people in rural areas without land-line service cleared the Kentucky state Senate on a 24-13 vote. The measure now goes to the House, where two key lawmakers have said the bill is problematic.
House Tourism Development and Energy Chairman Keith Hall, D-Phelps, has said he expects his committee to get the bill and that he has "a lot of concerns about it." Both Hall and House Speaker Greg Stumbo, D-Prestonsburg, said they want to make sure the legislation does not hurt the quality of and access to phone service in rural areas. The sponsor of Senate Bill 88, Republican Sen. Paul Hornback of Shelbyville, said it would not mean loss of telephone service for anyone in the state. The bill is needed, Hornback said, to increase the state's access to high-speed Internet. The bill has a "carve-out" to protect rural areas with fewer than 5,000 land lines from being disconnected. Hornback said major phone carriers would not be able to remove basic service from those areas unless another provider offered a similar service. In areas with more than 5,000 land lines, major phone carriers such as AT&T, Windstream and Cincinnati Bell no longer would have to provide basic phone services for new customers.
Bill deregulating land-line phone service clears Kentucky Senate
To understand how rural South Dakota is, consider this: The state ranks 17th in the nation in terms of geographic size, but 46th in population - with fewer than 820,000 people, according to the 2010 Census. In some parts of South Dakota, the distance between farmsteads can be six miles. Cattle outnumber people four to one.
For telecommunications companies, the state’s sparse population means that there are not enough customers in many places to enable them to recoup costly investments in advanced telecommunications networks needed to deliver high-speed Internet service. But even in the most remote corners of the country, access to broadband is becoming critical to fully participating in today’s digital society and information-age economy. That’s why NTIA’s Broadband Technology Opportunities Program awarded a $20.6 million grant to SDN Communications just over three years ago to bring broadband to parts of South Dakota that otherwise might never get it. The grant was one of the first to be announced in the $4 billion BTOP program, which is investing in roughly 230 projects nationwide that are building the technology infrastructure and skills that America needs to compete in the 21st century.
Bringing Broadband to Rural South Dakota
A new Facebook feature that lets users pay to promote their friends’ posts is raising privacy concerns.
The promoted posts abide by privacy settings, but users have zero control over which posts friends promote. There is no way to opt out of it. The feature is the latest in a series of gimmicks to generate revenue for Facebook. For a $7 fee, friends can select "promote and share" from the drop-down menu on the top-right corner of a friend's status update. Facebook says it is rolling out the feature because there was demand for it. The feature is supposed to benefit users, allowing friends to draw attention to good deeds, achievements or milestones, such as fund-raising for a charity, starting a new job or having a baby. "This feature respects the privacy of the original poster – i.e. it will promote to everyone who originally saw it. You can only promote posts to the people that your friend originally shared with. If you have mutual friends, they’ll see that you shared it and promoted it," Facebook said.
Facebook feature to promote friends' posts raises privacy issues
It's something that editors at The Miami Herald heard often, far too often. Readers would say that they'd like to comment on an article they had read on miamiherald.com. But they didn't want to face the abuse and the name-calling they were likely to encounter from anonymous commenters who disagreed with them. "People would say, 'I don't want to stand up in front of people who throw eggs,' " says Rick Hirsch, the Herald's managing editor, adding, "We had a big group of trolls who would do nasty things." And so the Herald became the latest news outlet to ban anonymous comments. Starting Feb. 11, visitors to miamiherald.com have to sign in through their Facebook accounts before they can weigh in on the news of the day.
Miami Herald ends anonymous comments
Facebook scored a court victory in Germany in a dispute with a local data regulator over which nation’s laws apply to its European operations.
The administrative court for Schleswig-Holstein suspended enforcement of an order saying Facebook must let users register under a pseudonym. The order is most likely illegal and shouldn’t apply while Facebook fights it, the court said. “The regulator wrongfully based its order on German data protection law,” the judges said. “Irish data protection law exclusively applies,” because Facebook handles the data in Ireland. Facebook has been fighting orders from German regulators, arguing it’s only subject to Irish law which is generally less strict then German privacy rules. Facebook Ireland, in Dublin, is responsible for all the Palo Alto, California-based company’s users outside the U.S. and Canada.
Facebook Scores Win in Legal-Regime Dispute with Germany
AT&T won partial reinstatement of its price-fixing lawsuit against AU Optronics Corp., Samsung Electronics Co., LG Display Co. and other makers of liquid crystal display panels.
A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals in San Francisco said that AT&T could sue the Asian companies under California’s antitrust law over panel purchases that occurred outside the state. The alleged price-fixing conspiracy may be sufficiently connected to California to allow the case to proceed, the court ruled. “A defendant cannot reasonably complain that the application of California law is arbitrary or unfair when its alleged conspiracy took place, at least in part, in California,” the court said.
AT&T Price-Fixing Suit Against LCD Panel Makers Revived
A new bill calls on Congress to fund $500 million in grants to states and districts for educational technology, and supporters say it could replace the old Enhancing Education Through Technology (E2T2) program, which died in 2011.
The Transforming Education Through Technology Act was introduced Rep. George Miller (D-CA), the ranking member on the House Committee on Education and the Workforce. The ed-tech bill is backed by a coalition of national education organizations representing K-12 schools across the United States, including the Alliance for Excellent Education (AEE), American Association of School Administrators, Association of Educational Service Agencies, Consortium for School Networking, International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE), National Rural Education Association, Software and Information Industry Association, and State Educational Technology Directors Association.
New ed-tech bill supports digital learning, Common Core
Forget The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal. Chinese hackers are on a digital espionage campaign targeting a vast array of pretty much any major American organization "with intellectual property to protect," and now that there's a rare human side to combatting the malware attacks, we know there's not enough being done to stop the hackers yet.
In a new cover story, Bloomberg Businessweek's Dune Lawrence and Michael Riley follow one of the American malware experts attempting to fight the war on hackers, and he reveals a long — even impossible — battle ahead. Since he began tracking Chinese hackers in 2004 at Dell SecureWorks, Joe Stewart has had two big successes in spy hunting, as he unveiled the identities of the hackers "Zhang" and "Cyb3rsleuth."* And he doesn't exactly deny Lawrence and Riley's assertion that the ongoing Chinese malware spying goes straight to the top: “Investigators at dozens of commercial security companies suspect many if not most of those hackers either are military or take their orders from some of China’s many intelligence or surveillance organizations.” Indeed, the BusinessWeek story builds on growing fears that Chinese hackers might be targeting a whole lot more than just a couple of newspapers in the United States.
Why America Is Losing the War Against China's Hacker Spies A Chinese Hacker's Identity Unmasked (Bloomberg)